


Part of All That I Have Met

by deathwailart



Category: Mass Effect
Genre: F/M, Headaches & Migraines, Implied/Referenced Character Death, Tattoos
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-09-08
Updated: 2014-09-08
Packaged: 2018-02-16 15:44:16
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,069
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2275398
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/deathwailart/pseuds/deathwailart
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Kaidan has a migraine and sleeps it off in Saoirse's cabin until it passes.  When he wakes up, they end up talking about Saoirse's tattoos and those they've lost.  Takes place prior to <a href="http://archiveofourown.org/works/2024913">Sink</a></p>
            </blockquote>





	Part of All That I Have Met

With the light in the cabin as low as she can make it, Saoirse combs her fingers through Kaidan's hair, fingers catching in his curls, still a little damp from a shower. A quick glance down confirms that he's still asleep but his features aren't as pinched from pain as they were when he showed up at her door, eyes mostly shut and looking miserable. She can sympathise with the migraine issue so she told him to get in the shower, leaning in to turn it to the highest setting before moving around the cabin to fluff the pillows and make the bed – the duvet and half the sheets hanging off after last night and Kaidan joining her and then her having a nightmare – and turn down the lights for when he stumbled out. They know by now what to do during an attack, seasoned migraine sufferers that they are so she handed him a pair of sweatpants because he's moved in pretty much, before she him to the bed where she instructed him to lean back against her as she massaged his shoulders, up to his neck and then his head, working out as much tension as she could. He fell asleep against her and he hasn't moved an inch since she adjusted them so he was still curled against her, one of her hands in his hair and the other holding a datapad to keep working.  
  
She's tired herself but she needs to keep up to date with as much as she can, from whatever wreckage they salvage to the results of the probes they send to planets that actually come up with something before they head down in the shuttle to deal with it.  
  
Kaidan murmurs and shifts and she smiles. She couldn't do this without any of them, the people who've been there from day one. Well, minus Javik but he seems to have her back as readily as the rest of them do, either because she's fighting Reapers or from whatever he's picked up each time he's touched her or the ship. They care about her, they love her. After Akuze she tried so damn hard to not get attached to people because that kind of pain had almost ripped her apart, watching her squad get picked off one by one, all of them screaming but the Normandy had been different. From stopping Saren to wiping out the Collectors, all of them discovering the true nature of the Reapers and so much of what they'd taken for granted in life, dealing with their old ghosts, she'd managed to deal with her own. Losing the first Normandy had hurt, it still does, losing Ash, Mordin, Thane, that hurts too but she can deal with it better. And there's always the memorial wall, little talks in the small hours, one hand touching cool nameplates and if people think it's weird that she talks to them and leaves pauses for their answers then she doesn't care. Her friends are still with her in some way and she'll take comfort where she can.  
  
"Hey," Kaidan says, blinking and rubbing a hand over his face, rousing her from her daydream and making her realise that the words she's been trying to read have blurred into nonsense. "How long have I been out?" His voice is thick with sleep, the words slurred from exhaustion and the pain meds. Saoirse remembers when those worked for her and how one minute she'd be sore and the next she'd be groggy and slurring her words.  
  
"A few hours," she replies, putting her datapad down as she wriggles so she's lying next to him. He still looks tired but his features are relaxed and when she lets the hand in his hair slide down to his neck, she feels no tension and smiles. "Feeling better?"  
  
"Head feels kind of like it's full of wet sand and like I just took on a krogan but I can actually _see_ ," he jokes and she gets it. She's never had the whole aura or vision loss thing when her migraines hit, she gets a combination of dizziness and struggling to form sentences without ridiculously intense concentration.  
  
"Anything's better than the actual migraine, right?"  
  
"Damn right." He stretches out more comfortably, yawning loudly and that make her yawn, always tired even if she's good at fighting it and keeping going because there isn't much of a choice and it's not the sort of exhaustion sleep tends to put a dent in. "You should get some sleep too."  
  
"Yeah," she agrees, stretching out next to him, Kaidan's head on her shoulder, "I just need to get the last of my work brain to shut up."  
  
Kaidan laughs quietly, fingers tracing one of her tattoos. "I know how that is."  
  
"Talking usually helps but you need the sleep and-"  
  
"Tell me about your tattoos," he interrupts and she glances down at him. "If you feel like it, it's just that I never got to ask about them much, before."  
  
"I think we had much more on our minds then," she agrees and it's sometimes hard to believe how different her life was then, before she died, when their biggest worry was the geth. "I...I lost most of them. When I, y'know, died." Talking about her death with Kaidan is harder than talking about it to someone else, probably because they were together and he spent two years mourning and then moving on with his life when it was only moments for her. Right now isn't always the time even now that they're together again, as fresh a start as they can get as well as making up for lost time.  
  
"Sorry, I-"  
  
It's her turn to interrupt him this time, kissing away the apology before he can continue. "No, I want to talk about them, we never know how long we have and I _want_ you to know about them."  
  
It takes a few moments of adjustment for Saoirse to wriggle out of her oversized t-shirt and her shorts until she's in just her underwear; it's still a big thing for her, to be able to sleep next to someone else like this without any sort of fear and there's nothing better than feeling Kaidan's skin against hers, warm and solid around her.  
  
"Anywhere I should start?" She asks because she's got plenty of them and before she used to just start with the first one because that made the most sense after all but now with her rebuilt body, things are different.  
  
"You decide, it doesn't have to be in order." Kaidan props himself on his side, elbow bent so he can rest his cheek on his hand as Saoirse takes a deep breath.  
  
"I guess the oldest one before was the Reds one," she begins as she points to the small of her back. "It used to be on my left forearm, back when I was running with them, like part mark of honour and so everyone knew. I got it done again on Illium when we stopped there after I caught up with Liara. It wouldn't be me without it, it was a part of my life but it feels right, it being where it is now. It's behind me."  
  
"Didn't you have an N7 tattoo on your ass?" He asks and she laughs, nodding.  
  
"I was so drunk, seemed like a good idea. Maybe if Jack's got some free time that lines up with mine I'll get her to do that. I told you about what Joker said on the shuttle after Grissom Academy, right?" Kaidan nods, smirking at her and well, she's not ever going to tell Vega that yes, she had the same tattoo because he's taking it so seriously and he doesn't need to know that much about his commanding officer's backside. She shuffles on her knees to turn, raising her left arm out of the way to show off her ribs and the neat black script.  
  
"I am a part of all that I have met," Kaidan begins, reading through the lines, his voice getting softer as he gets to the last line, "for ever and for ever when I move." His fingers gently brush over it and one day having to make that choice won't hurt the way it does but at least Kaidan remembers this one too, when it was still red and he put aloe vera over it, when they were hunting down geth and grieving together. "For Ash."  
  
"Yeah, not the lines she recited but I liked that part. I got it done the same time I got the Reds tattoo, they were the ones that mattered from before." She half-turns as she talks and Kaidan's hand follows, around and up to her shoulder and upper arm, the newest of her tattoos. She misses how she used to be before she died and sometimes wonders if it makes her ungrateful but she had so many tattoos and scars, a way to map out her life and now she only has the handful she's got now.  
  
When the war ends, she's going to have plenty more to add.  
  
"Still with me?"  
  
She gives herself a shake before she turns to look at Kaidan, realising that's she zoned out. "Yeah, good thing this is the last one for now."  
  
"It's beautiful," he murmurs, fingers running over blue and green ink, "it looks like watercolour."  
  
"It's meant to. I always liked how they looked and this is for Mordin. And Thane. It felt right." She's told Kaidan never met Mordin but he's been caught up on the exploits of the SR-2 on the Collector mission and what he missed out on when he was in hospital and on the Citadel. After Thane's offer to watch over him in the hospital, they ended up bonding. He's the only person she's told about Thane's prayer for her as he died, the only one she thinks she'll ever tell.  
  
"I get the Thane part," he runs a thumb over a jellyfish, pinks and purples, "but Mordin?"  
  
"He said he'd study seashells once he cured the genophage. Maybe that's where he is now, with Thane."  
  
"With Ash sniping seagulls."  
  
Saoirse laughs because otherwise she's pretty convinced she'll cry and she doesn't want to, not now. "There's some text in there, I know what to look for but, uh, move your thumb up a few inches and to the right, yeah."  
  
"I am the very model of a scientist salarian," Kaidan reads and Saoirse looks over her shoulder to smile at him.  
  
"Yeah. There's another line," she turns awkwardly, takes hold of Kaidan's hand and leads it down to where a swarm of silver fish skirt the tentacles of the jellyfish.  
  
"And everything is blue again like morning," he murmurs and when he pulls her close she lets him draw them both down to the bed, Saoirse rolling over so she's on her back, Kaidan's head on her shoulder so she can stroke his hair again.  
  
"More poetry?" He asks, blinking sleepily and she nods before realising he can't see her.  
  
"Pablo Neruda," she confirms, yawning as she glances over to the fish swimming in the tank, jellyfish puffing along and at least one eel's face poking out from the artificial rocks. "Can't remember the whole thing right now but it's called It Is Born. It's the last line: and time and again the darkness would be broken, by the crash of a wave, and every day on the balcony of the sea, wings open, fire is born, and everything is blue again like morning." Reciting it makes her miss Ash, the first friend she could ever really talk to about poetry, Wrex and Garrus giving them odd looks when they'd sit in the hold reading and chattering away to one another and she wonders why she never shared this with Kaidan before but life was crazy then. Well, not compared to now but she knows her way of quantifying crazy has changed entirely.  
  
Kaidan makes a contented sound and she knows he's asleep by how limp he is and she's fighting it herself, yawning so hard her jaw cracks as she makes herself comfortable, warm and as safe as they can be for now. The galaxy and the war can wait until morning, she decides, pulling the covers up, she's earned an early night.

**Author's Note:**

> All those planet scanning assignments in ME3? In my headcanon they play out like the ME2 missions where you actually do have to head down to do them but at times it's not always Shepard with them and other combos of the crew head down to deal with things.
> 
> And again this is more gratuitous headache/migraine fic because it makes me feel better about my own.


End file.
